More than a Mistress/No Man's Mistress (86 page)

V
IOLA HAD FOUND THE
courage to look up while the duke spoke. She gazed across the room at Ferdinand, handsome and elegant in his crisp black and white evening clothes, and so very, very dear.

Her husband
.

How she had longed for him all day. But she had had the reception to prepare for, and he had had business to attend to so that he could be ready to leave with her for Pinewood tomorrow morning. And they had wanted no one to know except her mother and the duke, whom they had told after their brief, achingly beautiful wedding early in the morning.

How she had longed all evening to go to him, to have him come to her. But she had insisted, and he had agreed, that this evening was something she must do for herself, in her own person. She would not hide behind anyone’s coattails. The evening had been incredibly hard, but she had felt his powerful, comforting presence at every moment of it, and she had done it—for herself and for him. He had taken a great gamble, marrying her this morning before he knew for sure that the
ton
would not spurn her and turn its back on him.

She gazed at him now across the room and rose to her feet as he came striding toward her, his dark eyes alight, one arm lifting as he drew close. She set her hand in his, and he raised it to his lips.

It was only then that she became fully aware of the noise about them—voices and applause and laughter.
But then the noise died away again. The Duke of Tresham—her
brother-in-law
—had not finished speaking.

“There has not been a great deal of time,” he said, “but my duchess is a resourceful lady—I did share the secret with her, of course. And we have able servants. We ask you all to join us in the ballroom after supper. But before we adjourn …” He lifted his eyebrows in the direction of his butler, who was standing in the doorway, and the man stood aside for two footmen, who were carrying between them a white and silver three-tiered wedding cake.

“The devil!” Ferdinand murmured, gripping Viola’s hand and drawing it through his arm. “I might have known it would be fatal to say anything before tonight.” His eyes were dancing with merriment when he looked down at her. “I hope you won’t mind too much, my love.”

For the next half hour she felt too overwhelmed to know if she minded or not. Her mother came to hug them both, as did Jane and Angeline—who each insisted that she must now call them by their first names—and even the duke. Lord Heyward and the Earl of Bamber hugged her and shook hands with Ferdinand. But then Jane insisted it was time to cut the cake and carry it around on a silver platter so that all the guests could have a chance to congratulate them and wish them well.

It was the very fuss they had hoped to avoid by marrying quietly.

It was wonderful.

Gradually the guests drifted away from the dining room until only Jane and Angeline and Viola’s mother were left apart from the newlyweds. Angeline was complaining bitterly about two brothers who had foiled her
dearest wish to organize a grand wedding. But interspersed with the complaints were tears and hugs and an assurance that she had never been happier in her life.

“Besides,” she added, “if I have a daughter I will be able to give her the grandest wedding anyone has ever seen. Then you will know what you and Tresh missed, Ferdie.”

“We should go and join everyone else,” he suggested, smiling so warmly into Viola’s eyes that her heart turned over.

“Why the ballroom?” she asked.

“A question I have been trying not to ask myself,” he said with a grimace. “First, though, a matter of importance that I should have seen to as soon as Tresham made his announcement, love.” He drew her wedding ring out of a pocket of his evening coat and slid it onto her finger—where it had lain for such a brief spell during the morning. He kissed it. “For all time, Viola.”

The ballroom was large, imposing, and quite breathtaking, Viola saw. The guests stood about the edges of the dance floor. An orchestra occupied a dais at the other end of the room. Three large chandeliers overhead glistened with all their candles alight. The walls and windows and doorways were adorned with masses of white flowers, greenery, and silver ribbons.

There was renewed applause as Viola and Ferdinand appeared in the doorway. The Duke of Tresham stood on the dais, waiting for quiet.

“An impromptu ball, ladies and gentlemen,” he said, “in celebration of a marriage. Ferdinand, lead your bride into the opening waltz, if you please.”

Ferdinand turned his head and looked down at Viola as the orchestra began to play. He looked embarrassed and pleased—and also slightly amused.

“Now, what are you doing hiding here,” he murmured to her, “when you should be out there dancing?”

She was struck by the familiarity of the words and then remembered where and when he had spoken them before. She smiled back at him.

“I have been waiting for the right partner, sir,” she replied. And, more softly, “I have been waiting for
you.
”

She set her hand on his and he led her onto the dance floor and set one arm about her waist. He moved her into the lilting rhythm of the waltz while their wedding guests watched. His eyes smiled into hers.

And then she remembered something else from that fateful May Day about the village green in Trellick.

Beware of a tall, dark, handsome stranger. He can destroy you—if you do not first snare his heart
.

If you loved
More than a Mistress
and
No Man’s Mistress
, get ready to learn how it all started in …

Coming soon from Delacorte Press in hardcover

Turn the page for a sneak peek inside.

L
ADY
A
NGELINE
D
UDLEY
was standing at the window of the taproom in the Rose and Crown Inn east of Reading. Quite scandalously, she was alone there, but what was she to do? The window of her own room looked out only upon a rural landscape. It was picturesque enough, but it was not the view she wanted. Only the taproom window offered that, looking out as it did upon the inn yard into which any new arrival was bound to ride.

Angeline was waiting, with barely curbed impatience, for the arrival of her brother and guardian, Jocelyn Dudley, Duke of Tresham. He was to have been here before her, but she had arrived an hour and a half ago and there had been no sign of him. It was very provoking. A string of governesses over the years, culminating in Miss Pratt, had instilled in her the idea that a lady never showed an excess of emotion, but how was one not to do so when one was on one’s way to London for the Season—one’s
first
—and one was eager to be there so that one’s adult life could begin in earnest
at last
, yet one’s brother had apparently forgotten all about one’s very existence and was about to leave one languishing forever at a public inn a day’s journey away from the rest of her life?

Of course, she had arrived here ridiculously early. Tresham had arranged for her to travel this far under the care of the Reverend Isaiah Coombes and his wife and two children before they went off in a different direction to celebrate some special anniversary with Mrs. Coombes’s relatives, and Angeline was transferred to the care of her brother, who was to come from London. The Coombeses arose each morning at the crack of dawn or even earlier, despite yawning protests from the junior Coombeses, with the result that their day’s journey was
completed almost before those of more normal persons even began.

The Reverend and Mrs. Coombes had been quite prepared to settle in and wait like long-suffering martyrs at the inn until their precious charge could be handed over to the care of His Grace, but Angeline had persuaded them to be on their way. What could possibly happen to her at the Rose and Crown Inn, after all? It was a perfectly respectable establishment—Tresham had chosen it himself, had he not? And it was not as if she was quite alone. There was Betty, her maid; two burly grooms from the stables at Acton Park, Tresham’s estate in Hampshire; and two stout footmen from the house. And Tresham himself was sure to arrive any minute.

The Reverend Coombes had been swayed, against his better judgment, by the soundness of her reasoning—and by the anxiety of his wife lest their journey not be completed before nightfall, and by the whining complaints of Miss Chastity Coombes and Master Esau Coombes, aged eleven and nine respectively, that they would
never
get to play with their cousins if they had to wait here forever.

Angeline’s patience had been severely tried by those two while she had been forced to share a carriage with them.

She had retired to her room to change out of her travel clothes and to have Betty brush and restyle her hair. She had then instructed her drooping maid to rest awhile, which the girl had done to immediate effect on the truckle bed at the foot of Angeline’s own. Meanwhile Angeline had noticed that her window would give no advance notice whatsoever of the arrival of her brother, so she had left the room to find a more satisfactory window—only to discover the four hefty male servants from Acton arrayed in all their menacing largeness outside her door as though to protect her from foreign invasion. She had banished them to the servants’ quarters for rest and refreshments, explaining by way of persuasion that she had not noticed any highwaymen or footpads or brigands or other assorted villains hovering about the inn. Had they?

And then, alone at last, she had discovered the window
she was searching for—in the public taproom. It was not quite proper for her to be there unescorted, but the room was deserted, so where was the harm? Who was to know of her slight indiscretion? If any persons came before Tresham rode into the inn yard, she would simply withdraw to her room until they left. When Tresham arrived, she would
dash
up to her room so that when he entered the inn, she could be descending the stairs, all modest respectability, Betty behind her, as though she were just coming down to ask about him.

Oh, it was very hard not to bounce around with impatience and excitement. She was nineteen years old, and this was almost the first time she had been more than ten miles from Acton Park. She had lived a
very
sheltered existence, thanks to a stern, overprotective father and an absentee overprotective brother after him, and thanks to a mother who had never taken her to London or Bath or Brighton or any of the other places she herself had frequented.

Angeline had entertained hopes of making her come-out at the age of seventeen, but before she could muster all her arguments and begin persuading and wheedling the persons who held her fate in their hands, her mother had died unexpectedly in London and there had been a whole year of mourning to be lived through at Acton. And then
last
year, when all had been set for her come-out at the indisputably correct age of eighteen, she had broken her leg, and Tresham, provoking man, had flatly refused to allow her to clump into the queen’s presence on crutches in order to make her curtsy and her debut into the adult world of the
ton
and the marriage mart.

By now she was ancient, a veritable fossil, but nevertheless a hopeful, excited, impatient one.

Horses!

Angeline leaned her forearms along the windowsill and rested her bosom on them as she cocked her ear closer to the window.

And carriage wheels!

Oh, she could not possibly be mistaken.

She was not. A team of horses, followed by a carriage,
turned in at the gate and clopped and rumbled over the cobbles to the far side of the yard.

It was immediately apparent to Angeline, however, that this was not Tresham. The carriage was far too battered and ancient. And the gentleman who jumped down from inside it even before the coachman could set down the steps bore no resemblance to her brother. Before she could see him clearly enough to decide if he was worth looking at anyway, though, her attention was distracted by the deafening sound of a horn blast, and almost simultaneously
another
team and another coach hove into sight and drew to a halt close to the taproom door.

Again, it was not Tresham’s carriage. That had been apparent from the first moment. It was a stagecoach.

Angeline did not feel as great a disappointment as might have been expected, though. This bustle of human activity was all new and exciting to her. She watched as the coachman opened the door and set down the steps and passengers spilled out onto the cobbles from inside and clambered down a rickety ladder from the roof. Too late she realized that, of course, all these people were about to swarm inside for refreshments and that she ought not to be here when they did. The inn door was opening even as she thought it, and the buzz of at least a dozen voices all talking at once preceded their owners inside, but only by a second or two.

If she withdrew now, Angeline thought, she would be far more conspicuous than if she stayed where she was. Besides, she was enjoying the scene. And besides again, if she went upstairs and waited for the coach to be on its way, she might miss the arrival of her brother, and it seemed somehow important to her to see him the moment he appeared. She had not seen him in the two years since their mother’s funeral at Acton Park.